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Telehealth News and Market Developments
Philips: Philips and Masimo Expand Partnership to Improve Telehealth for Patients and Clinicians Around the World (1/18) – Royal Philips, a health technology company, and Masimo, a global medical technology company, announced an expansion of their partnership to augment patient monitoring capabilities in home telehealth applications with the Masimo W1™ advanced health tracking watch. The W1 will integrate with Philips’s enterprise patient monitoring ecosystem to advance the forefront of telemonitoring and telehealth. Using Masimo’s secure health data cloud, patient information will be relayed to the Philips patient monitoring ecosystem for remote clinician surveillance.
Healthcare IT News: After a Big Telehealth Buy, Horizon Health Alliance Now Serves 70 Percent Of Patients Virtually (1/18) – In 2019, Horizon Health Alliance, a mental health and substance use disorder care provider, received grant funds from local Western New York grant foundation agencies to work with telemedicine technology and services vendor Alliance for Connected Care board member Amwell to implement a new virtual care department at Horizon. In November 2019, Horizon launched a controlled pilot to assess patient demand and clinical/operational workflows. Since then, Horizon has achieved a decrease of 40 days wait time for psychiatric services by the end of the grant period. "Telemedicine did not replace our brick-and-mortar locations. It supplemented the work we do there, which made it significantly more expensive to treat our patients than it did before technology became a tool many of our patients now depend on."
American Medical Association: Future of Health Immersion Program (1/18) – The Future of Health Immersion Program is designed to support physicians, practices and health systems in optimizing and sustaining telehealth and digital care modalities at their organizations. Formerly known as the AMA Telehealth Immersion Program, the Future of Health Immersion Program expands on telehealth to address the challenges of access, quality, outcomes, affordability and equity for all as new digital technologies are being used to provide care. The program is a self-guided curriculum and consists of live and recorded webinars, interactive peer-to-peer learning sessions, virtual discussions, bootcamps and resources on-demand.
Daily Bruin: Op-ed: Ashe Center Should Offer Telehealth Appointments to Meet Health Care Demands (1/18) – Students of University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) face increasing battles accessing on-campus medical care. In this op-ed, the authors recount stories of students reporting on having to delay care for over a month to obtain in-person treatment. The authors note that the Student Health and Wellness Center require students to receive an in-person pre-screening for a telehealth appointment. The authors urge the university to prioritize an expansion of all telemedicine to ensure medical access for students across the campus.
Medical Group Management Association: 2023 Advocacy Agenda (1/18) – The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), a provider advocacy group, released its 2023 advocacy agenda. In particular, MGMA will support long-term telehealth solutions that promote cost-effective, high-quality care while appropriately reimbursing practices. The foundation of MGMA’s advocacy agenda is to ensure the sustainability of medical group practices and advance their ability to provide high-quality patient care. For additional coverage, see PoliticoPro.
mHealth Intelligence: Ensuring Telehealth Implementation Doesn’t Exacerbate Clinician Burnout (1/17) – Telehealth can support efforts to mitigate burnout by providing clinicians with flexibility in how they work and enabling them to widen access to care, which can ultimately help them do their jobs better. Eve Cunningham, chief medical officer of strategic partnerships at Providence has seen that telehealth has helped curb burnout at the health system in various ways. Primarily, the implementation of telehealth enabled Providence to cover a broader population of patients with a smaller workforce without stretching its staff to a breaking point. Conducting visits from their homes can help clinicians do their work effectively while mitigating burdens associated with coming into the clinic. The Alliance for Connected Care released a survey which found similar results. "Those 92 hospitals would never be able to find 92 different neurologists that could cover on any given night," she said. "So, we're able to reach all of these hospitals that maybe don't have the volume to support a specialist onsite. We're able to stretch that specialist support across multiple locations — it helps those caregivers and those providers that are onsite in those facilities."
Healthcare IT News: Keck Hospital and School of Medicine of USC Makes Powerful Strides with Tele-GI (1/17) – The pandemic spurred the health system's gastroenterologist professors, other clinicians, IT leaders and administrators to kick some very complex virtual care into high gear. Patients requiring upper or lower gastrointestinal diagnostics normally have to present to a hospital or clinic for a tube-based endoscopy. However, Keck Hospital and School of Medicine of USC turned to GI Digital’s telehealth service for GI diagnostics, or tele-GI, which is combined with what the vendor calls its Tele-GI Smartbox, to support the four main components of the capsule endoscopy procedure with telehealth: pre-procedure, procedure, post-procedure and reporting. Telemedicine visits for patients with obscure GI bleeding have become common practice for Keck Hospital and School of Medicine of USC.
Publix: Publix Opens Fourth Telehealth Site with Beaufort Memorial Hospital (1/17) – Publix Pharmacy is opening its fourth telehealth site with Beaufort Memorial Hospital in South Carolina. The telehealth centers include a private room with teleconferencing and medical diagnostic equipment like stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs, high-definition cameras and other tools necessary for common diagnoses. Patients speak directly with a licensed health care provider through videoconferencing technology to receive care for common nonemergency medical conditions like coughs, fevers, flu and rashes. The fee to use the telehealth center is $67 per visit, and appointments are not needed.
WTVM: Harris County School District and Mercer Medicine Set to Launch New Telehealth Program (1/18) – The Harris County School District (HCSD) and Mercer Medicine of Harris County announced the launch of the new HCSD telehealth program. Each school will be equipped with a private room where the nurse and patient will virtually connect with a provider. The specialized equipment allows the school nurse to assist with the virtual examination. Once enrolled, students, faculty, and staff will be able to schedule virtual appointments with health care providers, receive diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and fill prescriptions online. The program will begin receiving patients January 31, 2023.
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